On September 9, the Technology Showcase returns for its ninth year. In addition to showcasing cutting-edge biomedical technologies developed at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNL) and National Cancer Institute (NCI), the event offers educational and networking opportunities for companies, investors, entrepreneurs, technology scouts and other biotech stakeholders.
The Showcase will kick off at 11:30 a.m. with a networking lunch.
Presentations will start at 12:30 p.m., and Jeff Allen, Ph.D., President and CEO of Friends of Cancer Research, will deliver the keynote.
There will be two panels: “Dos and Don’ts of Partnering with NCI and FNL” and “Moving Things Through FDA Review.”
A handful of funding agencies will also give five-minute pitches with tips on how to get serious consideration. There will be exhibit tables, networking and one-on-one partnering opportunities via our conference app. The networking element is a key part of the event.
“The Technology Showcase is unique to the National Institutes of Health—not just NCI and FNL—in that it is a unique assembly of the medical research community,” said Michael L. Salgaller, Ph.D., of NCI’s Technology Transfer Center.
Salgaller has been a member of the planning committee since the event’s inception.
“It’s a place where researchers can meet entrepreneurs and investors for potential spinouts,” he said. “It’s a place where inventors and tech transfer professionals directly interact with potential collaborators and licensees.”
Available technologies
As the name suggests, the cornerstone of the event is the great technologies available for licensing or partnership. NCI and FNL inventors will present each technology.
FNL inventor Stephen Adler, Ph.D., will present on the next-generation autoradiography device called the Quantitative Particle Identification (QPID) digital autoradiography system.
This tool could help improve radiotherapy dosing for cancer treatment. The QPID system can image the radioactive dose in a tissue sample. What makes it unique is that this device can measure charge particle activity emanating from a tissue sample for individual decays.
“This technology can image radiation emissions at micron dimensions and at nanosecond time scales,” Adler said. “This breaks open a new frontier in quantitative dose measurements in tissue, critical for assessing state of the art alpha and beta targeted radiotherapies.”
Another inventor from FNL, Stephen Stern, Ph.D., will present a targeted, nanoscale delivery platform for therapeutics.
This platform can selectively deliver its therapeutic cargo to target cells and slowly release the active drug. The slow drug release represents an advantage over current nanomedicine platforms, which do a rapid, burst release. The platform is suitable for a wide range of applications, including cancer therapeutics and vaccines.
See the agenda for the complete list of technologies.
Other resources
Participants will also learn how to access resources at the FNL and NCI, such as the Patient-Derived Models Repository and the Antibody Characterization Laboratory, both of which provide materials (patient-derived cancer models and antibody reagents, respectively) to the external research community.
A collaborative event
This event is part of a collaborative effort between FNL, NCI, Frederick County Office of Economic Development, City of Frederick Department of Economic Development, Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, TEDCO, and the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer.
The event is free, but registration is required. Registration closes after September 2.